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Born and bred in Edinburgh and with a geeky interest in technology from a very early age, David founded Nucleus over eleven years ago, fulfilling a mission to create the UK’s first crowdfunded and genuinely collaborative platform. He remains immensely proud to lead the ever-growing team that makes Nucleus a credible and refreshing market participant, particularly at a time when honesty and accountability have never mattered more.

Here we are again, with one year behind us and another just beginning. The financial landscape is changing so fast it makes an annual reappraisal of the state of the nation that much more difficult. But here goes anyway...

Many industry discussions still refer to the "post-RDR environment", despite it being almost five years since the RDR was implemented.

As it turned out, most advisers pretty much sailed through the transition to fees, and the rest got there in the end. Finally liberated from the price of advice being set by insurers, asset managers and old-style platforms, it seems the advice market is thriving and customers are enjoying better service than ever before.

Nucleus chief executive and founder David Ferguson explains how looking to the future and a desire for innovation and putting clients first has seen the company grow over the past 10 years.

Ten years ago today (and after eight years of trying) we finally secured the funding which allowed us to get this show on the road. Kicking off in a tiny basement in Edinburgh’s New Town we had an ambition to build a modern financial services business which would have clients at its core and transparency as its watchword.

Don't buy the sales message, take a forensic approach to due diligence.

Last Friday's FCA paper on adviser due diligence was an interesting staging post on the road to the extreme professionalism of adviser firms.

There’s a cartoonist called Hugh MacLeod who we love at Nucleus. He’s very generous and sends us an email every single day. One we got late last year really hit me hard. The phrase on it said ‘Are you haunted by your own potential?’

We’ve always had big plans but this seriously resonated with me – to be haunted by your own potential.

The pensions regime in the UK has been extraordinarily complex over the past 30, 40, 50 years, says Nucleus founder and CEO David Ferguson as he offers his own thoughts on the retirement revolution and the ‘massive opportunities for quality advisers’. As he explains, the challenge not just for the industry but for society as a whole now is filling the advice gap: ‘I see no reason why people should save money and not be able to access it at an appropriate point in their lives - but there are risks involved for those who have no access to advice at all’.